A cry for help and an Answer?
by Bookworm1986
Summary: An angry, confused and lonely young man pays a visit to the only person he thinks listens to him. Someone else is listening and they know what the young man is feeling. That bitterness. Will they help?


Disclaimer - I do not own Homeland. That pleasure belongs to Showtime. No copyright infringement or money making scheme intended. This is purely for reading enjoyment.

A/N Something that came to me and demanded to be written. One shot to help get me back in the swing of writing FanFic

* * *

He paces in front of the headstone, careful not to stand on the lilies he has just laid. His breathing is heavy with panic because he can't stand the thoughts pressing in on him and the loneliness that envelopes him. The life he did not ask for and does not want, but has been left with. He's sure it is not meant to be this way. He's not supposed be living, if you can call what he does living, suspended in misery. Sometimes he's not entirely sure that he isn't already in hell.

"I'm angry, Grandma." He waits a beat imagining how she might respond. "I know it's not healthy to rely on it, but it's the only emotion that sustains me now. It's all I have." He waits again for an answer, sighing and feeling irritated with himself when none is received.

He kicks out at the ground beneath his feet, ignoring the throbbing in the big toe of his left foot and continues to pace regardless. Must be the soldier in him. He snorts at the thought. Fourth Generation, that's what he's supposed to be. He's not old enough to join the Marine Corps just now anyway, but he won't be and not just because they won't take him, but because he will not serve America. He wonders if his grandfather can hear his thoughts and if he is disappointed. His grandfather who served so proudly. His grandfather who had left him an heirloom for when it was his turn. He knew he would never open that box to find out what was in it. His grandfather never lived to see his beloved Marine Corps blackmail his son and Country leave him to rot…for a second time, only second time death was quick and public. He never lived to see his wife waste away in her son's absence through captivity, never lived to see the ruins they would leave his daughter-in-law and grandchildren to live with.

He sits down in front of her and speaks.

"I despise them, Grandma. People. I've gotten better at blending into the shadows and not being seen, but I've heard the whispers that follow me, the nasty, cruel and judgemental words. Because of who I am, or rather whose son I am. Adults directing their ire at a child and, for the longest while I wanted to slap them awake, wanted to scream at how stupid they are. Why can't they see the damage they do with their words, their ignorance and why couldn't they see they are villains too? Eventually I came to the conclusion that for a lot of people it is not necessarily that they don't know the damage they do and it isn't necessarily that they don't realise they're villains, even if indirectly, it's just they'd rather do anything than look in the mirror and acknowledge it. So, they run around spouting vicious words and directing their own anger at the worst of themselves onto someone like me who has the misfortune to carry such infamy and..."

Suddenly, he's crying in fury, hot tears streaking down his face while he tastes the bitterness at the back of the throat and helpless to stop either.

"I'm bitter, Grandma, at every look I receive from every adult and child." "Bitter" and he lowers his voice to a whisper, "that I'm being watched. Do you see them Grandma? They're waiting for me to make a move. Expecting it probably, as though they have a clue who I am. Maybe they've already decided I'm just like dad. How do they even know who dad is WHEN I DON'T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST CLUE?" aware of his voice rising he forces himself to calm down, taking deep breaths before continuing "How have they have decided to think the worst of me when I haven't even made my mind up yet about what to do. I'm an easy target I suppose…for both sides. I'm an angry, confused and lonely young man", he whispers in admittance.

There is nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the rustle of the leaves as the wind whistles around him.

"I used to be ignorant too, Grandma, but now it is not at all difficult to understand how such a young man could be convinced to become a suicide bomber." He ploughs on verbalising all the thoughts that have been plaguing him and that he is scared of. "If I were to make the choice, Grandma and go through what has been suggested, I can see the headlines already 'Like father, like son', 'bad blood'. I hear the words that would be spoken about me and I despise them for it, but what does it matter if people judge you when you're dead, when they were too stupid to see you needed their help and not their anger, when you were living? What does it matter when being dead is so much preferable to living with that horrible empty ache in your chest every day, than living with that horrible feeling that another bit of you has ripped itself apart from you and you are slowly, agonisingly dying anyway?" He feels his anger rising, but keeps going because he needs to let it out as though cleansing himself. "What does it matter when they are incapable of learning, of listening and understanding that they helped to do this when they directed all their anger at a child and expected him to deal with it like an adult? When they destroyed every notion of protection and belief that I had? When they isolated me leaving me with nowhere to turn and squashed all the goodness out with their own actions?"

He feels as though he has run a race and forces himself into silence for a few minutes.

"I can't sleep." He closes his eyes tight suddenly wishing that he were anywhere but here, that he were anyone but himself. Every word hurts, "I see him all of the time. It's ironic because when I was a child all I wanted was to see him. All I wanted was my dad. My dad who everyone said was a hero even though I didn't quite understand why, but was proud because people said I should be. Then he came home and I was disappointed. This was what a hero looked like? Not quite the movies. Then everything went to hell twice over and dad's not a hero any more. Just evil and apparently always has been. Even when he was serving his country. Putting it all on the line for those who judge him now so harshly." Chris forces out a bitter laugh.

"I don't know if everything they have said about dad is true or not, but for so long when it mattered, now it doesn't because I can easily see why someone as broken as dad had been could make those decisions."

He stands up again needing to pace, to work off some of the tension building at what he is thinking now. Rushing it out before his shame stops him. "He haunts my nightmares and I wish him away. I wish as Dana once had that he had never come home. That I had never known him at all because I was happier with the childish, ignorant notion that my dad was a hero. I'm angry that he has left us to deal with the mess left behind. Angry that he has left me to flounder around in darkness with no possible guidance. I'm angry at him for walking out on us a second time. Angry he decided that CIA cow mattered more than me or Dana. Angry that I will never truly know if he loved me or not."

He feels the anger and bitterness coursing through his veins, but he also feels it leaving him as he verbalises every horrible thought.

"I don't know what to do Grandma."

He pauses for a moment. There is always that hope that from somewhere an answer might come, and the horrible disappointment each and every time when all he hears is the beating of his own heart against his ribcage and his choked sobs. Yet he has to do it, because she's the only one who listens when he needs to speak.

"I think I know deep down no matter how angry I am at people, I don't want to be a killer. So, I don't know what to do. I know what the right thing to do is but I don't want to be a puppet for America like dad was and that is what would happen isn't it? I'm uniquely positioned in some horrible, ironic way." Chris sighs knowing in his heart what he needs to do. He wonders if **she** is among the agents tailing him. He doesn't want to see her and he isn't quite ready to do the right thing just yet. He speaks, the childish, defiant and bitter words before he can stop himself. "I'd rather swing like dad than help her."

* * *

He shifts uncomfortably in the driver's seat of the car as he hears those last words spoken with such force of bitterness that no teenager should possess and yet he knows Chris Brody is not the first nor is he likely to be the last.

"Poor kid", Virgil says sympathetically.

"Yeah", Quinn replies very glad that he had put his foot down and refused to have Carrie with him on this. She'd been quite shocked he'd said no to her. Not as much as him right enough even though he would never admit that to her. Best to pretend his resolve had been intentional.

"What do we do?", Virgil asks.

Quinn shrugs, "let him cool off or strike while the iron is hot."

"Well, we know what Carrie would do", Virgil answers.

Quinn whips his head round to look at Virgil and he can only assume his anger for once is showing on his face, as Virgil shrinks back from him slightly. He sighs, forcing himself to look back at Chris Brody. "Yeah, we do. She'd be right in there taking advantage of the kid's emotional state. Never mind he's the son of the man she loved." He hears the bitterness in his own voice. He's tired of this. All of it. He's come close to walking away a couple of times and he held back for Carrie.

"You okay?", Virgil's question pierces Quinn's thoughts.

"He reminds me of someone."

"Who?", Virgil asks and Quinn suspects it is more to give him an opening should he wish to take it because he's sure Virgil has already guessed the answer. Does he want to take the opening? Sharing information about oneself, in his line of work, even with someone you trust is either asking for trouble or an admittance that you're done. He thinks he might be done this time.

"Me."

They hear the unmistakable sound of Chris Brody sobbing and it makes Quinn angry. Quite who Quinn is angry at the most for the kid ending up in this position he isn't sure.

"I had a choice like the kid of which way to go." He thinks of Chris's words 'angry, confused and lonely young man' and that certainly would have been an accurate description of himself at that age as well. He'd often wondered what made Nicholas Brody the better man in Carrie's eyes. He saw now that was a pointless question. He and Nicholas Brody are both damaged goods. But Brody's son still has a shot at being a decent man. He's not lost yet.

"I'd thought back then that I had been making a choice to do the right thing, but I couldn't see what Chris Brody is so easily able to see, that it wasn't a choice, but a manipulation of a kid with no one and nowhere to go."

Virgil meets his words with silent contemplation at first. "So, I ask again, what do we do?"

"We help him help us…", Quinn opens his car door to get out looking at Virgil as he does so. "And then we help him."

"When will you tell Carrie that you're going for good?"

Quinn allows a small smile to creep over his face. Virgil and Max could act and appear to be entirely stupid and unaware of themselves or their surroundings, but the truth is quite the opposite.

"I don't think I will", Quinn shrugs his shoulders, shutting the car door and walking towards the crumpled form of Chris Brody.


End file.
